The winner: Minions
They’re small, yellow, speak an indecipherable babble and lack the strong individual characters typically associated with hit movies, and yet Minions has just scored the biggest debut weekend in the UK for an animated feature. Most people would struggle to pick Stuart, Kevin and Bob out of a lineup, yet the trio has bested Toy Story, Shrek and all the other big guns from Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks.
With a debut of £11.59m, Minions has beaten the opening weekends of animation powerhouses Toy Story 3 (£11.49m), Shrek 2 (£10.61m) and Shrek the Third (£10.33m). Despicable Me 2 – the previous best in the franchise – began with £9.95m. Two big caveats to consider, however. First, these figures are not adjusted for inflation. And second, they are three-day comparisons only. Preview takings have been stripped out of all the aforementioned numbers. (Minions didn’t have paid preview screenings.) Including previews, Minions is way behind its rivals. Four days of previews boosted Toy Story 3’s opening “weekend” (effectively a seven-day figure) to £21.19m. Previews pushed both Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third to openings above £16m, and Despicable Me 2 close to £15m.
Minions continues the remarkable success story for Universal in 2015. In less than six months, the studio has scored four openings above £10m, beginning in February with Fifty Shades of Grey (£13.55m), continuing in April with Fast & Furious 7 (£12.77m), and again in June with Jurassic World (£19.35m including previews of £2.51m) and now Minions. No other UK distributor has managed three £10m-plus openings in a calendar year, let alone four. Minions should enjoy four strong weeks of play, with negligible competition for the family audience until Pixar’s Inside Out arrives on July 24. Its box-office target will be Despicable Me 2’s final tally of £47.46m.
The success of Minions confirms the ever more competitive environment between studios in animation. For decades, Disney dominated. Then in 1995, Toy Story heralded the arrival of Pixar as a new force – initially distributing in partnership with Disney, then acquired by the Mouse House in 2006 for $7.4bn. Antz put DreamWorks on the map in 1998, with 2001’s Shrek anointing it as a major competitor. Ice Age put Fox strongly in the game in 2002. Warners (Happy Feet, The Lego Movie) and to a lesser extent Sony (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) have robustly entered the space. And Universal’s Illumination subsidiary, with its Despicable Me franchise, is scoring hits every bit as big as the market leaders. For the heads of these animation studios, the pressure to deliver with each film is intense.
The runner-up: Jurassic World
After two weeks at the top spot, Jurassic World has been pushed into second place by the evil-serving, banana-hued urchins. Takings fell by 48% from the previous frame. Although the number of cinemas playing Jurassic World has barely changed, the screen count and showtime count will have dipped significantly, as multiplexes switched their focus to Minions. Still, £5.78m for a third weekend of play is not too shabby. In May, Avengers: Age of Ultron managed £3.51m at the same stage of its run.
With £48.91m so far, Jurassic World is already the biggest hit of 2015, and bigger than any release from 2014 or 2013. In other words, it’s the biggest film at UK cinemas since Skyfall. The film looks a dead cert to reach £60m here, landing it a spot in the top 10 UK box-office hits of all time (not adjusted for inflation). The original Jurassic Park grossed £47.89m here in 1993.
The chasing pack
With Minions and Jurassic World posing such a potent threat at cinemas, no other major release arrived at the weekend. The Eli Roth-directed Keanu Reeves genre title Knock Knock found its way into 266 cinemas, achieving a rather weak £251,000, for a site average of £943. The rest of the top 10 is made up of held over titles. The fact that Secret Cinema’s The Empire Strikes Back saw takings dip by 3%, and yet its chart placing rose from ninth to fifth, says a lot about the flatness of the market below the top two titles.The Secret Cinema event continues its very steady run. With 22 of its 100 engagements under its belt, The Empire Strikes Back has grossed £1.42m, putting it on target for £6.5m if the current pace is sustained.
The arthouse alternatives
The indie scene has been short of notable hits lately, unless you count Mr Holmes, which is a very broad release now in more than 500 cinemas. So the arrival of Slow West – the feature directing debut of former Beta Band member John Maclean – was welcome news for programmers at arthouse venues. The result was a decent £134,000 from 69 cinemas (£1,946 average), rising to £141,000 with previews added in. The film stars Kodi Smit-McPhee and Michael Fassbender in a western twist on the road movie. Nearest rival in the arthouse space is the reissued The Third Man, with £18,700 from 16 venues.
Raunchy comedy The Overnight (“strong sex, sex references, nudity, strong language, drug use,” cautions our film classification board) found itself marooned between mainstream and specialised, resulting in a limp opening of £13,900 from 67 cinemas.
The disappearing act: Everly
Since premiering at Fantastic Fest last September, Salma Hayek action thriller Everly has suffered the fate of the less favoured child. In the US, it was released via iTunes in January, enjoying a limited cinema release a month later. In the UK, the release date has been sliding around; it finally reached cinemas last Friday. Four cinemas, to be exact. (It is currently playing Burnley Reel, Cardiff Premiere, Hull Reel and Port Talbot Reel.)
An opening gross of £160 resulted. By swerving the multiplex chains, Everly may be released on DVD within the standard 17-week theatrical window, and indeed arrives on the format on 10 August. Publications that opted to review Everly may not have been aware of the very limited nature of its release.
The future
Since Minions outgrossed the entire official Rentrak top 10 from the equivalent weekend a year ago – when Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie landed at the top spot – it’s no surprise to see takings overall a robust 82% up on that particular session. (World Cup football caused a significant road block in the release schedule a year ago.)
This weekend sees the arrival of Terminator: Genisys, the latest in a reasonably robust franchise, although it was six years ago that previous entry Terminator Salvation began with £6.94m, including £2.16m in previews. Likely to give Terminator a run for its money is the savvily titled Magic Mike XXL, which has been precision-tooled by its stakeholders to give fans of the first film more of what they enjoyed. And the much-acclaimed Amy Winehouse documentary Amy, from Senna director Asif Kapadia, should also deliver robust numbers.
Top 10 films, 26-28 June
1. Minions, £11,558,946 from 571 sites (new)
2. Jurassic World, £5,776,465 from 604 sites. Total: £48,912,405
3. Spy, £630,497 from 422 sites. Total: £8,611,784
4. Mr Holmes, £396,982 from 516 sites. Total: £1,695,740
5. Secret Cinema: The Empire Strikes Back, £275,875 from 1 site. Total: £1,415,015
6. Entourage, £271,731 from 378 sites. Total: £1,256,233
7. Knock Knock, £250,549 from 266 sites (new)
8. The Longest Ride, £205,549 from 363 sites. Total: £989,255
9. San Andreas, £196,676 from 265 sites. Total: £11,167,836
10. Slow West, £140,858 from 69 sites (new)
Other openers
Sardaar Ji, £106,489 from 19 sites
The Terminator, £66,492 (including £46,405 previews) from 90 sites (rerelease)
She’s Funny That Way, £22,331 from 19 sites
The Third Man, £18,658 from 16 sites (rerelease)
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, £16,849 from 15 sites
The Overnight, £13,912 from 67 sites
Station to Station, £3,341 from three sites
Hustlers Convention, £793 from two sites
The Wrecking Crew, £570 from three sites
Hippocrates, £386 from one site
Concrete Clouds, £381 from three sites
Everyone’s Going to Die, £331 from two sites
Faberge: A Life of its Own, £170 from one site (event cinema)
Everly, £160 from 4 sites
Blood Cells, £1,994 from 2 sites
• Thanks to Rentrak
